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BREAKING NEWS & VIEWS

Bing – More Than a Blip?
Wednesday, June 10, 2009

Microsoft has gone this way before. Launch a product that tries to play catch-up with a market leader and throw hundreds of millions of dollars at its promotion. Sometimes it works (Windows, Internet Explorer) and many times it doesn’t (Microsoft Live, Windows Mobile). With its new search engine Bing, however, the goliath from Redmond has a chance at some traction; Bing could prove to be another funnel of traffic to content sites like yours. According to comScore’s preliminary figures for its first week of Bing operation, Microsoft’s penetration among people using search services online grew from 13.8% to 15.5% (+1.7%), but its share of search results pages went up from 9.1% to 11.1% (+2%). Search results pages served indicate levels of activity, so there is some indication that users trying Bing continued to use it for multiple queries. According to comScore, the lift in penetration has been relatively constant throughout the past week, again suggesting that users are returning even after satisfying their initial curiosity.

Bing tries to trump the familiar Google experience by bringing more content from destinations onto the page so users can be more confident of their click-throughs or get their immediate questions answered without moving to a destination page. They made a very honest attempt to create something useful to consumers,” says David Berkowitz, director of emerging media and client strategy, 360i, a marketing agency. “What is actually the most surprising thing about Bing is that it is a Microsoft product. Focusing on the consumer experience is not a strong suit for them,” he says.

Nevertheless, he says that the all-important search marketers Microsoft is hoping to attract from Google may not be impressed yet. “They are wait-and-see types,” he says. Microsoft has been seeing its search share fall in recent years even as Google moves past a 70% control of the market in most estimates. Marketers have complained in the past that Microsoft search just doesn’t drive enough traffic.

Another search metrics service, StatCounter, says that Bing overtook Yahoo in its first week, with 16.28% of searches compared to 10.22% for Yahoo. The company metrics show that Bing may have been stealing share from Google, which lost a couple of share point over the week.

If the audience comes and stays consistently, the ad spend will follow, but Bing has to show sustained growth in search share first. The problem in growing market share for search may have less to do with quality of product than it does with habit, however. Most users would be hard-pressed to say exactly what they want search to do better. Even new and interesting twists on search (Ask.com, Clusty.com or last year’s purported “Google-killer” Cuil.com) fail to lure people from the flawed but familiar Google. But even if Microsoft can manage to claw its way to No. 2 in the market, that changes the dynamic somewhat for advertisers and media partners. Just about everyone in the content and marketing ecosystem is looking for Google to get a worthy opponent—competition that will help improve products and services for everyone.

If you have breaking news to share please contact Steve Smith at ssmith@accessintel.com

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